The Palms Casino Resort, Las Vegas, Nevada, Sunday, October 4, approximately 2:30 a.m.: A woman overflowing out of a skintight mini-dress teeters on her high-heeled strappy sandals as she sips a cocktail by the slot machines. Next to her, a dude in a Superchunk T-shirt checks his iPhone. And they're both talking with their friends about the Belle and Sebastian set.

Welcome to Matador at 21: The Lost Weekend in Las Vegas. And welcome to indie rock in 2010. It's not just us nerds at this party anymore. And what a party it is.

The Palms by Natalie Kardos

A decade ago, this event would have been almost unthinkable: Matador, a label once synonymous with scruffy underdogs, throwing its anniversary bash at the Palms, a ritzy complex with multiple pools, high-end nightclubs, and the kinds of hotel suites most of us have only seen on celebreality TV shows. (Other notables appearing at Palms clubs this weekend included Pauly D from "Jersey Shore" and former heavyweight champion "Smokin'" Joe Frazier.) The Palms hosted the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards, so Robert Pollard got to high-kick on the same stage that Britney Spears underwent her "Gimme More" meltdown.

But Matador isn't an underdog anymore. Just last month, Interpol's self-titled album debuted at No. 7 on the Billboard 200, the highest chart entry in label history. Matador alums Spoon, who performed on Saturday night, have had two top 10 albums. With each passing year, indie moves further into the mainstream. An enormous billboard for Vampire Weekend loomed over Flamingo Road leading towards the Palms, and ads for LCD Soundsystem's upcoming performance at the main venue, the Pearl, were everywhere inside the resort. The days when all this stuff existed only in a small network of zines, clubs, and record stores are long gone. Some mourn the passing of that era, when you didn't hear Cold Cave in a commercial every time you turned on your TV. And there's definitely something sad about the loss of that innocence. But indie's commercial and cultural achievements are also worth celebrating. It's pretty fucking amazing that Matador has lasted this long. The label has produced an astounding body of work and continue to do so. These guys deserved a mega Vegas blowout.

With so much music discovery taking place online, the value of festivals like Matador at 21 becomes more than just "hey look, a bunch of awesome bands are playing this thing." It's about fostering a sense of community. So many of us spend most of our time experiencing this music alone, listening on iPods or computer speakers. We talk about it through keyboards and telephones, not face to face. At Matador at 21, we were thrown into an alternate universe where bands and fans hung out for three days straight, eating together, gambling together, doing karaoke together, geeking out to the Clean together. We just happened to be surrounded by the bizarre decadence of Las Vegas. Which was actually pretty cool.

Guided by Voices by Natalie Kardos

The best moments of Matador at 21 came when bands heightened that sense of community. The reunited Guided by Voices rewarded the festival's biggest and most enthusiastic crowd with a dream collection of 1993-1996 favorites. Underneath a blinking neon sign that read "THE CLUB IS OPEN", they started off with "A Salty Salute" and did "Shocker in Gloomtown", "Tractor Rape Chain", "Pimple Zoo", "My Valuable Hunting Knife", and "Buzzards and Dreadful Crows" within the first 15 minutes of their relatively short hour-and-a-half performance. (They also did "Game of Pricks", "I Am a Scientist", "Motor Away", "Gold Star for Robot Boy", "Tractor Rape Chain", "Cut-Out Witch"... my fingers are getting tired. Go look it up.) Any fears that time off would have dulled Pollard's wit, voice, or energy were quickly dismissed. "I need water," he declared after "My Son Cool". "Back where I come from, this is water," he continued, holding up a Miller Lite. Earlier, he confessed to not being able to remember the name of a Guided by Voices EP. Ah Uncle Bob, it's good to have you back.

Guitarist Mitch Mitchell and bassist Greg Demos were so incredibly psyched to be there, it dripped from their pores. Before GBV even took the stage, Mitchell bum-rushed Yo La Tengo's set during the climax of "Blue Line Swinger", confusing the hell out of a whole lot of people. He spent Guided by Voices' set hamming it up, high-fiving and fist-pumping the front row. When the set ended, he was still at it. The music stopped, the lights came up, and Mitchell did a swan dive into the crowd. He stuck around taking photos and giving fans hugs as the place emptied out. As for Demos, he seemed like he'd been airlifted in from a hair metal band.

Yo La Tengo by Natalie Kardos

During GBV's set, Hamish Kilgour from the Clean ran on stage at one point, hugged and high-fived Pollard and Mitchell, then dove into the audience. Matt Sweeney from Chavez somehow rose up from the middle of the pit, crowdsurfed his way to the front, and sang and danced with the band. Throughout the weekend, sets were full of guest stars, impromptu and otherwise: Kilgour played drums with Yo La Tengo on a few songs, and Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley from Yo La Tengo guested with the Clean. The New Pornographers' Carl Newman and Sally Crewe of Sally Crewe & the Sudden Moves duetted with Ted Leo. Leo sang with Liz Phair. Fucked Up's Damian Abraham brought his toddler son Holden on stage and sang "No Epiphany" while holding him in his arms. (It sure is going to be hard to get that kid not to misbehave once he figures out what his father does for a living, huh?)

Ted Leo by Laura M Gray

The highlight of the collaborations, though, was the Ted Leo and the Pharmacists vs. Fucked Up "battle of the bands" that took place after the main show was finished on Friday night. Both groups took the stage at the same time, trading off sets of two songs a piece, occasionally joining each other. The raucous celebration featured mostly covers: Fucked Up took on Nirvana's "Breed", Superchunk's "Precision Auto", Jay Reatard's "An Ugly Death"; Ted Leo did Liz Phair's "Fuck and Run", Misfits' "We Bite", and Billy Bragg's "Between the Wars". Together, they did the Sex Pistols' "Bodies", Black Flag's "Rise Above", and Mission of Burma's "That's When I Reach for My Revolver". Guests included Superchunk drummer/comedian Jon Wurster and his comedy partner Tom Scharpling. At one point, Leo crowd-surfed while playing guitar, and didn't miss a note. It was the kind of once-in-a-lifetime event that makes a festival like this worth it.

Belle and Sebastian by Natalie Kardos

Belle and Sebastian are also pros at making fans feel like family (see Pitchfork editor-in-chief Scott Plagenhoef's 33 1/3 book about If You're Feeling Sinister for an in-depth exploration). Even though they unleashed the festival's most lavish stage setup (floor-to-ceiling curtains, risers decorated with the art for their new album, Write About Love), they might as well have been playing somebody's living room. In between exquisitely rendered favorites like "The State I Am In", "Sleep the Clock Around", "Piazza, New York Catcher", and "Me and the Major", Stuart Murdoch told jokes and threw autographed footballs into the crowd. He brought up five lucky fans to dance and clap along with "There's Too Much Love" and "The Boy With the Arab Strap", and rewarded them further with gold medals.

Spoon by Natalie Kardos

Of course, some might have found all this insufferably annoying. And they might have loved Spoon's slick, professional, and totally impersonal set right before Belle and Sebastian. It sounded great, particularly the spare, chilling "The Ghost of You Lingers", and the interlude with a six piece horn section, but other than a cover of Jay Reatard's "No Time", it might as well have been any stop on their current tour. Cat Power, Girls, and the New Pornographers also delivered sets that didn't live up to the occasion. Cat Power started off with a gorgeous solo version of her famous cover of the Rolling Stones' "Satisfaction", and kept her guitar strapped on for "Good Woman". But once the axe came off, she pretty much played the same stuff she's been doing with her Dirty Delta Blues Band for years. The New Pornographers suffered from sound problems, not to mention a general lack of enthusiasm. As usual, Dan Bejar seemed like he wanted to be anywhere but on stage, wandering off when he wasn't needed and playing with his back to the audience when he wasn't singing.

Pavement by Laura M Gray

Speaking of not wanting to be there... it sure is a good thing this was Pavement's last American show on their reunion tour. What should have been a triumph went out with a whimper, as the band struggled with technical problems, sluggish energy, and general sloppiness. At times, Stephen Malkmus seemed into it; at one point, he flopped on the ground and threw his legs over his head while playing guitar, giving the crowd an excellent view of his underwear. But mostly, they just seemed to want to get it all over with and get back to their regular lives. The crowd responded in kind, barely showing excitement even for classics like "Gold Soundz", "Cut Your Hair", and "Range Life". "It's going to get better after this," Spiral Stairs said after "Shady Lane". It didn't. Later in the weekend, in between bands, the screens above the stage showed the infamous "Beavis and Butt-Head" clip critiquing the "Rattled by La Rush" video. "It's like they're not even trying!" Beavis shouts. He was right.

In the reverse of Pavement, who came in with high expectations and failed to live up, Liz Phair surprised with a brief, satisfying set of classics. Accompanied only by a guitarist, Phair performed "Supernova", "Divorce Song", "Stratford-on-Guy", "Nashville", and "Fuck and Run". (Ted Leo jumped in on the latter.) Those 20 minutes won't erase the ill will Phair has generated since her tenure on Matador ended, but they helped. And it sure was better than her playing anything off of Funstyle. Which would have been a pretty ballsy fuck-you, but also would have probably been a Britney-level disaster.

Perfume Genius by Laura M Gray

In general, louder, faster, more high-energy artists fared better than those on the more introspective side. Pity poor Perfume Genius, who had to follow the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion's Vegas-appropriate juggernaut of a set with his brittle piano laments. (How the hell does Jon Spencer continue to A) Never age, and B) Do deep knee bends in those skintight leather pants?) Superchunk played like they were headlining the Warped Tour, and the crowd pogoed like ecstatic 14-year-olds at their first VFW hall show. Unfortunately, Come's brutal scuzz-grunge dirges fell kind of flat, through no fault of the band. You just can't deliver aching laments about addiction as forcefully in a pristine Las Vegas showroom as you would be able to in a seedy club.

Of course, the real star of the festival was Matador itself. Not every band treated the festival like a special occasion-- Sonic Youth didn't perform anything from their only album on Matador, last year's The Eternal, instead focusing on songs from before 1995-- but most took the opportunity to thank the label profusely. And some went above and beyond. Carl Newman joined Ted Leo and the Pharmacists for a cover of Nick Lowe's "I Love My Label" that was punctuated by Leo telling a story about how he's been smitten with Matador since going to a 1989 show by H.P. Zinker, the first band ever on Matador. During the New Pornographers' set, Newman talked about how he met his wife, a former Matador employee, through the label. (Emphasis on the "former." "No wife of mine will work for Matador Records!" he joked.) Yo La Tengo turned their cover of Sun Ra's "Nuclear War" into a tribute to the label's staff, listing off what seemed like every person to ever work there. Robert Pollard apologized for leaving Matador in 1999 to sign with TVT: "we thought we were hot shit." But Guided by Voices "came crawling back" to Matador in 2002.

In between acts, the label showed videos from throughout its history, offering a fascinating nostalgia trip. Watching Cat Power and Liz Phair at the dawn of their careers, timid and modest, hiding behind big guitars and hair in their faces, stood in sharp contrast with the self-assured near-divas on stage. Forgotten Matador acts like Console, Solex, the Arsonists, the Shams, Mecca Normal, and Bettie Serveert were given their moments in the sun. And the cheesy faux-children's show clips from the 1997 video collection What's Up Matador proved what everybody already knew: Matador Records has always a great sense of humor. They threw their anniversary party at the fucking Palms in Las Vegas! What's funnier than that?